Bitten...

I couldn't take it anymore. Everyone posting pictures of their new chicks. Even though our eggs are due to hatch next Monday, I needed more instant gratification. It's a virus really--they call it chicken fever.

We got 12 chicks today. Four Rhode Island Reds, four Barred Rocks, and four assorted banties. We (read that as me) wanted to get the reds and rocks to breed together to get sex-linked chicks. That means as soon as the chicks are hatched, you can tell sex by the color of the chick. With a Barred Rock mother and a Rhode Island Red father, the girl chicks have black feathers with a red neck and the boy chicks look like Barred Rocks. This will be handy for knowing right away which ones we can sell as pullets and which ones to keep for butchering. We're not sure on the banties, but hoping for all hens. By comparing pictures on hatchery websites, it looks like we have a couple Old English Game Banties and a Cochin and a Japanese black banty. Ivy wanted banties so we let her pick them out. That's the one I think is the Japanese black--it's so little, about half the size of the others.

They are so cute and are just peeping away in the laundry room. They are only in that tote until tomorrow when I can swap them out to a bigger one. We took that to the feed store to buy them and the guy said, in 600 customers, you are the first to bring your own container for them. I laughed and wondered if the rest just carried them home in their pockets!